I want to begin this morning by showing you a few photos from a trip to Orkney I made a couple of years ago, and my apologies to the Orcadians in our midst if this stirs up a little homesickness!
Opposite is St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney. The cathedral dates from 1137 and was founded by the Viking, Earl Rognvald in honour of his uncle St Magnus. Parts of the building are over 850 years old, and it has a particular character because it was built with red a
nd yellow sandstone which are susceptible to weathering and the external of the building shows the effects of centuries of Orcadian weather!
This last image is of the Italian Chapel in Orkney. In 1942, 550 Italian POW’s were held on the island and were involved in building the Churchill Barriers which blocked access to Scapa Flow. It was agreed that they could construct a place of worship and this place was built out of two Nissan huts, and all the features you see were made from concrete metal and paint left over from the construction work. It's now an 'A' listed building and attracts over 100,000 visitors a year.I show you these images because they neatly prove a point I want to make. Across the centuries and across cultures we feel an abiding human need to raise something, build something, in honour of God. And these places, over time, come to have a great significance in our lives.
And our story this morning, the story of Jacob’s dream and his response to it, is another example of the same phenomenon.
Jacob, if you remember, was the son of Isaac and the twin brother of Esau, and although he was smart, he was conniving. And in Genesis 28 we find him on the run from Esau because he’s robbed him blind. He’s tricked him out of his inheritance and also their father’s blessing.
So although Jacob’s destined for great things – in a few chapters he’s going to be given the name Israel and become the father of a nation – for now, he’s a greedy little shmuck who’s nearly been hoist by his own petard. No great friend of the God of Abraham and Isaac, or Grandad and Dad as Jacob would have called them.
So this strange dream comes out of nowhere. Angels ascending and descending on a ladder whose top reaches to the clouds, but whose feet rest firmly in the red earth. And then God appears, making promises to this no good brat who up until this point doesn’t really seem terribly interested in him. Promises about land and family and blessings, and God’s continuing presence with him.
And Jacob wakes up a changing, if not changed, man. He takes the stone he’d wrapped in a blanket and used as a pillow, sets it up on its end as a memorial, and anoints it with olive oil in blessing. In his 40-odd years of life so far, it’s the first worshipful thing Jacob does, as far as we know. He raises a stone. He blesses it. He thanks God.
There it is – that basic human reaction to an encounter with God that we see throughout all the ages.
Now if you raise a few large stones, and then fill the gaps between them with a few more, work out how to put a roof on it, wire in electricity, get some carpets and some windows and add a few choice pieces of furniture – what have you got?
You’ve got a temple, or a synagogue, or a mosque, or a church. A space dedicated to the worship of God that’s comfortable enough for folk to gather in week by week. Protected from the elements and maybe even the curious looks of outsiders if you forget to put windows in it and surround it with high fences and big gates.
Now buildings, built specifically for worship, are good – for a lot of reasons. They can be beautiful and inspiring and functional. I might be wrong, but I’m guessing January attendances might suffer a little if we decided to congregate in the dunes at Balmedie Beach, or in a neighbouring field.
But here’s the thing. The moment you have a building dedicated for worship, you run the risk that people will start living as though the building were all important. As though we only encounter God, or encounter him most, when we are in that building.
Perhaps unintentionally, that was drilled into many of us as kids. You dress up in your best clothes when you go to church, because it’s God’s house. You sit up straight and keep your mouths shut, because it’s God’s house.
And respect and reverence have their place in the church. But when we step over the threshold as we come and go on a Sunday morning, are we saying hello to a God who hasn’t been with us all week, or farewelling God until next Sunday?
In her book “An Altar In The World”, Barbara Brown Taylor puts it this way – “Do we build God a house so that we can choose when to go and see God? Do we build God a house in lieu of having God come and stay at our place?”.
In what sense can we speak of any one place being God’s house? In the Scriptures God laughs at the very idea, though at times he seems to play along with it, more for our sake than for his. But lest anyone get the wrong idea, he’s at pains to say through the Psalmist “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.”
The truth is, God’s house stretches from one end of the universe to the other. There is no one place where we meet him. On the contrary - the geography of our days is littered with opportunities to encounter God in the most ordinary practices and places, if we only have eyes to see and ears to hear.
If Sunday is the only time we expect to encounter God, we place a intolerable weight of expectation on this time together. A burden this hour was never meant to carry.
Though our church buildings and services should certainly inspire us, and God undoubtedly meets us here, a biblical faith understands that the real place of encounter with God is in our daily living, during the other six days of the week.
We shouldn’t think of church as the place we come to experience God for an hour every Sunday. Church should be where we come to remember and give thanks for the ways we’ve experienced God throughout the week.
And over the next few months, that’s what I’m going to be preaching and teaching about – how we encounter God in the ordinary routines and patterns of our days. And I need to learn that stuff as much as the next person.
Centuries ago people got this; they knew what they had to do to be rooted deeply in Christ throughout the week. And we’re in danger of losing the memory of those practices, and we need to recover them if the church is to get a second wind in our lifetime.
And it all starts when you begin to live out of a truth that you already know: that God isn’t just in the church. God is in the world.
Earlier in the week I sent out an email to everyone in the church whose emails I have. I asked them to think of a time when they felt especially close to God, and without going into details, to tell me where it happened: here are a selection of the answers:
When I was ill in hospital and feeling a bit down.
When I’m out among the elements, walking.
When I was on the trolley heading for the operating theatre
When I was hanging out the washing.
When I was sitting at my father’s deathbed.
When I met a deer while out for a clifftop walk
When I was looking after a patient in a hospital ward.
When I sat in the kitchen with friends, talking, crying and praying.
When I was at my mother’s funeral
When I was climbing a mountain in Sri Lanka
When I sat looking out a window at the sunset in Southern Spain
When I used to ride on horseback through the countryside as a teenager
When I was really worried about someone and was out looking for them.
When I was out in the middle of nowhere on a Duke of Edinburgh expedition.
When I was at the birth of my children.
When I’m in church.
Of the sixteen folk who responded to the question, fifteen reported that their deep experience of God took place somewhere other than church.
God is waiting to be found in the world. And Jacob, in this morning’s story – shows us just that. Listen to what he says when he wakes up after his restless night’s sleep:
He says in v 16 “The Lord is here! He is in this place, and I didn’t know it!”.
He went to sleep on an ordinary patch of red earth somewhere between Beesheeba and Haran. And he woke up on the very same patch of red earth. Nothing had changed. But everything had changed, because he now knew in a real and vital way, that God was only ever a hairsbreadth away. That any place, any situation, any set of circumstances, can become a meeting place with God if we have eyes to see and ears to hear.
God is in the world. The place of meeting isn’t over there, or round the corner, or within four particular walls. It’s right in the place where you are, wherever that may be.
And though Jacob had his dream, and Moses had his burning bush, and Gideon had his fleece, and Elijah his still small voice, there’s a strong current in Scripture which gently reminds us that these are the exceptions rather than the rule.
Sometimes God appears unbidden. More often than not, he’s found by those who make it their business to seek him out. God’s canny that way. I think. He’s keen to see who’s interested. The Psalmist says just that in Psalm 14: “The Lord looks down from heaven on his people, to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God”.
“Seek God” is one of the most common commands in the whole of Scripture and the desire to seek God is as vital a sign of living faith as a pulse is a sign of a living body.
Is that desire, that pulse, within you?
If it is, we have a firm promise that that it won’t be disappointed.
“Draw near to God – says the apostle James – and God will draw near to you”.
Earlier this week, with a little bit of time and imagination, we turned this familiar space into a labyrinth. A handful of folk walked it on Sunday and Monday, and a good number more on Tuesday at the Guild. I spoke to many of them afterwards, and there wasn’t one for whom God didn’t show up in some way. Often in a very moving and powerful way.
And over the next few Sundays, I hope to show you that life itself is labyrinth enough to encounter God. All we need to do is approach life with that same spirit of openness and attentiveness, and we will find him, his feet dusty with the red earth of our ordinary living.
“The Lord is here!” we’ll say, as we look around us with new eyes. “He is in this place, and I didn’t know it”
Years after his angelic dream, Jacob made plans to return to Bethel where his stony pillow still stood as a landmark. By now he had wives, children and flocks and his travels had taken him across many hundreds of miles and through many dangers.
And the old man, now well on his way to becoming Israel, the Patriarch, said to his family “we’re going to leave here and go to Bethel, where I will build an altar to the God who helped me in the time of my trouble and who has been with me everywhere I have gone.”
Everywhere I have gone. Not just in Bethel. Not just within the four walls of the place I call my church. God is in the world, and it’s there he waits to meet us.
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